


Ides of March

by deathrae



Series: moonsinger chronicles [5]
Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, F/F, Ghost Stories, Possession, Werewolf Nicole Haught, pardon me taking a healthy amount of creative license with roman lore, s'up pups i'm back, surprisingly mostly offscreen violence for once
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-15
Updated: 2019-03-15
Packaged: 2019-11-18 14:22:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18122120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathrae/pseuds/deathrae
Summary: On the first anniversary of the first date they had together, Nicole takes Waverly out on the town to celebrate. First stop, an estate sale on the far side of the big city.But really, maybe she should have known that nothing anywhere near the Ghost River Triangle would be that easy...(Set after the events ofwhen the wolves are silent and only the moon howls. No spoilers or any content from season 3 other than a reference to the first episode.)





	Ides of March

**Author's Note:**

> It's been an entire year since I finished posting Wolves, so it seemed an anniversary story was in order... and what better topic for an anniversary story than Wayhaught's anniversary? With a supernatural twist, of course. ;)

The first December 2nd after, well, _everything_ , came entirely too quickly. And even once it did and the morning finally came, Nicole was gripped by a spirit of laziness. Waverly was soft and warm against Nicole’s side, and even though her right arm had gone numb sometime during the night from Waverly’s head resting on her shoulder, she couldn’t find it in herself to care. Honey was comfortable and lethargic, and the day would wait a few more minutes, wouldn’t it?

The sun cast narrow shards in through the blinds, turning an ornament of sapphire-colored blown glass on her bedside table into a prism. A kaleidoscope of light shone in every direction, blue sparkles climbing the walls, perching on the ceiling, sitting on the floor. The little glass sculpture was a gift from Waverly—a belated birthday gift once they’d got done pseudo-fighting in that awful Lucado-infested block of time between the Solstice and mid-January earlier that year. It made her whole room glow, bright and clear, and it was entirely too good a symbol for their entire relationship.

Nicole was pretty sure Waverly had picked it for that very reason.

She lost track of how much time she spent watching the refracted display and then Nicole watched Waverly sleep for a little while longer. She examined the easy relaxation of a face so often carefully controlled, the softness of the waves of long brown hair tucked behind Waverly’s ear. Nicole wondered, not for the first time, if that was where she’d gotten the name _Waverly_. It couldn’t have, of course, she’d been named with just a crown of baby-sized curls by a small and inexplicably endearing Wynonna, but there was a certain logic to it that Nicole went back to over and over again.

Waverly didn’t move, other than a fitful twitch of her fingers now and then, and Nicole felt Waverly’s breathing against her chest, easy and light. She could hear the soft, muffled sound of her heartbeat, could smell her shampoo and her skin. Her vision turned golden, softening until she could even mark eyelashes. Just for a moment, she wanted to touch Waverly’s face and shoulders, to count the scattered freckles with her fingertips. She tried, for a moment, to rein in the urge, with only partial success. She lifted her free hand and ran her fingers gently through her girlfriend’s long curls, shifting them in the process.

When she pulled her fingers away again the waves of her hair fell artfully along Waverly’s shoulder. It was so simple, so small, but it stole away Nicole’s breath like a thief.

“Hey baby,” Waverly murmured without opening her eyes.

“Hey.” Nicole huffed out a laugh. “Thought you were still asleep.”

“Hm.” Waverly stretched, and at the end of the sinuous motion she folded her arms more snugly around Nicole’s ribs. “Felt you.”

Nicole smiled and lifted her head, pressing a kiss to the top of Waverly’s. “Hey. Baby?”

“Hm?” Waverly said, and now she finally looked up, yawning and rubbing the heel of a hand into one eye.

“Happy anniversary.”

Suddenly Waverly was more awake, but also softer, unguarded, almost as she had been in sleep. Her smile was—there was no other word for it—radiant.

“Happy anniversary.”

“And speaking of,” Nicole said, twisting her body to pat across the side table until she reached her phone. She frowned at the too-bright screen, struggling to get her brain to cooperate enough to do some basic arithmetic. Honey huffed out a laugh at her, but also, she noted, did not _help_. Satisfied with the results of her math (there was time enough before they had to leave, but not all _that_ much) she rolled back over and kissed Waverly’s forehead. “Get showered and dressed, okay? I’ve got plans.”

Waverly blinked. “And just where are you going?”

Nicole grinned and tossed off the blankets, sitting up and stretching her arms over her head. She could _feel_ Waverly’s eyes on her. “Why, want me in the shower with you?”

Waverly flashed her best coquettish smile. “Surely you wouldn’t leave me _all alone_.”

“If I don’t,” Nicole pointed out, leaning over to press a quick kiss to Waverly’s mouth. “We’ll never get there in time.”

She got up, and Waverly watched her go, blinking. “Where?”

Nicole backed up toward the door, grinning. “It’s a surprise!”

 

The surprise was in fact an estate sale Nicole had heard about through the office grapevine. It was being held at a ridiculously nice building—Nicole’s mind provided “villa” and while probably it was technically inaccurate, it sure did seem to fit—on the north side of the big city. It was their first trip outside the Triangle in what felt like ages. Nicole felt the itch of the boundary’s pressure as they crossed the line out into freedom and open road, and Waverly took a deep breath, sighing it out only once they were over the border. A lingering paranoia, perhaps, or maybe just superstition.

The Not-Villa would have been more at home in agrarian France than Alberta, and seemed to be doing its best impersonation of Versailles at maybe a quarter of the palace’s original cost. Sprawling green lawns—now covered by an inch or two of unbroken, smooth white powder—spread out in every direction from the front drive, which was in turn lined with hedges and regularly irregular stones, arranged in a way that was just barely on the line between artfully spontaneous and obviously fabricated. As they drove up the lane Nicole had a funny feeling she’d seen this place in a music video at some point.

Waverly did not _actually_ have her hands and nose smooshed to the passenger window in an effort to see everything all at once, but it was a near thing. As it was, she was practically bouncing in her seat.

The building itself was absolutely enormous. It was, Nicole was quite sure, more accurately called a mansion, though she then found herself wondering what the difference was between a manse, manor, and mansion. Waverly would probably know, she realized, but Honey was unimpressed by the semantics debate, and _huffed_ disdainfully from the back of her mind, conveying without words a resounding sentiment of _what tasteless human bullshit_.

 _I agree with you there_ , Nicole thought at her. _You can’t take it with you when you go. Why live to such excess?_

Honey snorted at that, and said something that Nicole was pretty sure was some Grecian philosopher’s opinion on the issue. She might as well have been speaking Phoenician for all the difference it made to Nicole. She elected not to ask any more questions.

The house—or mansion, or whichever—was a monolith of imported stone and marble columns, meant to conjure a sense of some ancient Roman palace, maybe, or at least something nebulously post-Hellenic. The front face of the building was so large Nicole couldn’t see the sides of the building as they approached. The front drive curved around in front of the entrance, forming a loop around an elaborate tiered fountain larger than Nicole’s entire kitchen. Nicole pulled onto a gravel lot that she was pretty confident hadn’t existed while the mansion’s tenants were alive, and bent her head to peer up through the windshield, trying to spot the top of decorative Doric columns and the massive stone gable at the front of the building.

Honey apparently found that detail abhorrent, and growled a complaint that was mostly unintelligible. Nicole was pretty sure it was something about having made a mockery of the design of the Parthenon and, in so doing, ripping off the architect who built Apollo’s personal estate in Olympus.

Nicole definitely did not have time to unpack _that_ , and resolved to ask later.

 _Much_ later.

“Shall we?” she asked. When Waverly smiled and nodded, Nicole got out of the car, smoothing the front of her jacket as she circled the car to Waverly’s door. Having worn the outfit she’d planned for their anniversary during the unfortunate _vampire_ _escapade_ earlier in the fall, she had instead opted for a charcoal suit and a wine-colored silk shirt that fit so perfectly to her body she was a little concerned about popping a button if she took too deep a breath.

She opened Waverly’s door and offered her hand, tamping down the interested _rumble_ Honey made as Waverly took her hand and slid out of the car.

Waverly, for her part, had more than dressed for the occasion. She had evidently learned _several_ lessons from the Bading! Bading! debacle, including how well she rocked long slinky dresses, and today she was in a silver cocktail dress with a slit over one thigh that went almost to her hip, and a neckline that really ought to have been criminal. Nicole could hardly be upset with her for it though. The outfit _definitely_ suited her, and Nicole was all too eager to draw every eye in the room as they entered.

There were fewer than a dozen cars parked in the lot, but there was a good-sized crowd milling about the mansion’s ground floor when they went inside. A butler—an honest to god _butler_ —was at the door to invite them in, wearing a black suit and bowtie that was as much formal garb as it was a uniform. His hair was long and slicked back into an overly shiny look that reminded Nicole just a bit too much of _Marvel_ ’s Loki.

“Good morning ladies,” he said as they stepped into the entry hall. Nicole scanned the place on police and wolf instinct alike, counting entry and exit points (several, mostly internal and leading to other rooms and hallways) and people (twenty-seven guests so far, plus an assortment of eight or nine staff slipping in amongst the throng like minnows) and threats (nothing terribly overt, but plenty of hidey-holes for a hidden gunman, trap, or explosive).

She returned her attention to the butler just as Waverly was giving him her brightest dealing-with-a-customer smile and tucking her hand more firmly around Nicole’s arm.

“Thank you, Mister...”

“James, ma’am,” he said, bowing in a smooth, practiced gesture that said he did it often, and which Nicole fervently thought belonged in fantasy movies, not in _the real world_. “Guests have free rein of the ground floor for the purposes of the event, and help yourselves to the hors d’oeuvres and drinks in the next room,” he added, gesturing to a door on their left. “Please let me know if there’s _anything_ I can do for you, Madam Earp. Madam Haught.”

Nicole gave him a professionally rigid smile and guided Waverly in the direction he’d indicated, feeling the sudden flare of emotion in the woman at her side—an unstable solution of outrage, bafflement, and pride.

“ _Madam Earp?”_ Waverly whispered.

“He’s sure committed to the aesthetic,” Nicole muttered.

Waverly giggled behind her hand. “Apparently!”

They spent a half an hour or more schmoozing, flitting amongst the crowd and making nice with the other guests. All the while, they examined various items and whispered to each other about the absurdity of a 120-piece serving set made of bone (not bone china, as Nicole initially thought, but _actual, full-formed bone_ ) and the potential dark-magic uses of a set of 13 black taper candles being sold with an ornate candelabra that looked like a mutated _hanukkiah_. When they found a chalice of iron with an oddly bright, oddly _red_ ceramic interior, Waverly pulled Nicole down and whispered in her ear, “Who was this guy, a supernatural artifact collector?”

Nicole couldn’t do much more than shrug, but resolved to do a little more research about an estate before they ever did this again. It was getting downright eerie.

There was only one item that caught Nicole’s attention in any concrete way. It was an ancient dagger, sitting in a weathered scabbard inlaid with winding embossed patterns and simple metal clasps. It was odd, and almost out of place, so simple that it didn’t seem like it belonged in the room. But there was something about it, a _pull_ that drew Nicole to it the first time they came near to it. The card next to the knife—which was lying on a velvet pillow under a glass case—simply read _Pre-Christian Dagger, Origin Under Review_.

The opening bid, according to some whispering and murmurs amongst the guest, was in the low millions. Nicole choked on her breath and steered them in a new direction.

The plan was to visit the sale, maybe buy something if there was something that caught their eye (for a _decent_ price), then dinner in the city and a few hours of much-needed privacy back at Nicole’s place.

But as was so often true in Purgatory, the world said “fuck your plans.”

There was one pair of guests Nicole decided immediately that she disliked. The Rodricks were a married couple, both rude and very obviously of Old Money, because no one who’d earned their fortune would have quite the same cocktail of attitude problems. Mr. Rodrick was narrow-nosed and sallow-skinned. There was a certain greasiness to him that Nicole couldn’t quite put to words, but that made her think if he ever handed her something she’d want to have a napkin ready to wipe it dry first. His wife had a similar pointiness to her and was even more unpleasant than her husband. She squinted constantly, giving Nicole the oddest impression that she needed glasses and refused to debase herself with such an accessory.

They were also, apparently, deeply judgmental, but had the tact not to say anything overtly unkind when Nicole and Waverly were in earshot.

Then again, the Rodricks’ sense of what constituted “earshot” was based on _human_ hearing.

When Mrs. Rodrick said to Thomas Masters, a much friendlier gentleman in a tweed jacket with whom Nicole had been speaking earlier, “I’m shocked James allowed their kind in here,” Nicole’s growl rose very abruptly from mental to subsonic.

Waverly suddenly found reason for them to be across the room and dragged Nicole in that direction with a strength belied by her small frame.

“I know baby,” she said, when Nicole had shut her eyes, consciously blocked out the sounds of the guests, and taken several steadying breaths.

“What a shrew,” Nicole muttered.

“Yeah,” Waverly agreed.

From that point on Nicole tried her level best to make sure they didn’t go anywhere near the Rodricks, but after another twenty minutes, the Rodricks caused a scene that drew the attention of every guest in the room. They were bickering with another couple over the knife, insisting they would outbid them five times over, and demanding that one of the attendants take them into a side room and allow them to inspect it before the event began in earnest.

The attendant, a fluffy-haired mouse of a man named Josh, relented. While he looked small and easily cowed, he hefted the entire display case, glass and all, off its table. He then led the Rodricks into an adjacent parlor, and the door clicked shut.

The guests all more or less turned around to go about their business. But there was a prickle of tension crawling up and down Nicole’s spine that she couldn’t explain, and she drew Waverly a little closer to the parlor.

Several minutes went by and the noise level in the viewing hall rose back to its original low din. Waverly sipped wine and chatted with Masters, who turned out to be a professor in alternative theologies. Nicole only half paid attention as Waverly began discussing with him the finer points of post-Silk Road mythologies among African nations. The rest of Nicole’s focus was on the low rumbling of indistinct voices in the parlor. She heard a man’s voice rising, first in frustration and then into a low shout, and then nothing for another 30 seconds.

And then a woman screamed, the sound abruptly cutting off almost as soon as it had begun and giving way to a wet gurgle.

The other guests had barely started to react before Nicole bolted across the small distance separating them from the parlor. Waverly was right behind her, standing at her right hand as Nicole slammed the door open, the door latch splintering and bending under the weight of her shoulder and momentum.

The display case sat on a table with its glass set to one side. Beside the case stood Mr. Rodrick, his arms hanging at his sides, his shirt and jacket streaked with stripes of splattered blood. The ancient knife, bare metal catching the light, dangled in the fingers of his right hand. His eyes glowed with an unearthly hollowness, somehow bright despite being solid black and giving off faint tendrils of smoke.

On the ground before him lay Josh and Mrs. Rodrick, both lying in pools of their own blood, their eyes wide and blind in death.

“Ī,” Mr. Rodrick said, his voice low and rasping. He pointed at Nicole with the knife, and shouted again, “ _Ī!”_

“Latin?” Waverly whispered.

The strange smoke left Mr. Rodrick’s eyes, and on an instinct that was Honey-deep, Nicole twisted and jerked her upper body to the right, pushing Waverly with her. A sensation of wind, or a fast-moving and invisible bird perhaps, swept by where her head had just been. She twisted, trying to track it, but it disappeared from her awareness almost immediately, flitting away to some other part of the mansion. Mr. Rodrick slumped down to his knees, and then onto his back, the knife falling limply from his fingers.

Nicole placed her feet carefully to avoid walking in the pools of blood, and tugged a handkerchief out to gingerly recover the fallen weapon. An inscription along the length of the blade read _sic semper tyrannis._

She showed it to Waverly.

Waverly frowned at it. “I need some time to think, some books... did that look like a spirit to you?”

“Maybe, yeah,” Nicole said, checking in with Honey, who gave her the equivalent of a mental shrug, followed by bared fangs. “Something like that.”

“Then we gotta move before that thing strikes again.” Waverly winced. “And we should probably call Wynonna.”

Nicole sighed, but nodded.

Fuck her plans indeed.

 

The estate sale fell into a state of subdued chaos. While they waited for Wynonna to arrive with some research materials and much-needed backup, Waverly commandeered another one of the little sitting rooms with James’ help and turned it into an office while Nicole worked on evacuating the guests and the rest of the staff. Once all of the 33 remaining people were out of the mansion, including a shaking and very much shell-shocked Mr. Rodrick and, with a lot of cajoling and demanding and veiled threats, James himself, Nicole checked the other exterior doors on the ground floor, and then went to the front door to wait for their backup.

It wasn’t too long after the other cars had left—even Rodrick, who left only after swearing on his life and fortune that he would present himself for further questioning to Nicole once this was all over—that the blue and white pickup pulled into the lot, kicking up gravel and coughing exhaust over the pristine snow. The fountain actually seemed to shy away from it, the jets of water faltering for several seconds. Even the décor was displeased over the wheezing lower-middle-class work vehicle in its midst.

Wynonna sauntered up the marble steps with Dolls a few feet behind her, rolling his eyes and lugging a small plastic tote of texts Waverly had requested, plus some supplies—salt, white candles, holy water, and the like.

“ _Wow_ ,” Wynonna drawled as she stepped into the entryway. She scanned it much as Nicole had, but with an eye for judgement more so than threat assessment. “I’ve seen ostentatious, but this is impressively tasteless.”

“Trust me, I agree,” Nicole said.

“Whoof,” she added, eyeing Nicole up and down. “So the mongrel really can dress up. Dolls, you sure we’re allowed to be here?” Wynonna asked over her shoulder as Nicole shook her head and led them across the entry hall. “They won’t file an insurance claim against us, right?”

“What the hell are you talking about, Earp?” Dolls asked, though there was a certain exhausted fondness to his tone.

“Listen, I’m no realtor, but I am _pretty_ sure we’ve already dropped their property values just by _walking in_ ,” she said.

Dolls snorted a laugh and Nicole led them into the small office.

“What ya got babygirl?” Wynonna asked, then paused, taking in Waverly’s outfit. “Wow. Talk about impractical.”

“Well I hardly knew we’d be fighting an ancient poltergeist when I got dressed this morning, did I?” Waverly demanded, maybe a little snippily. Nicole definitely wasn’t the only one annoyed about this distraction. “Hi ‘Nona. Hi Dolls.”

“Don’t worry,” Dolls said with a wry smile. “We’ll try to wrap this up quick.”

Waverly had the courtesy to flush up to her collarbones, but she nodded. “Good.”

“Got any ideas?” he asked, setting the tote down on a table near Waverly. She dove into it with gusto, pulling out several texts and flipping through two of them simultaneously.

“I think so,” Waverly said. She didn’t look up from the books, but her attention slid to Nicole. “Did you tell them about the weapon?”

“No,” Nicole said, and fetched the cloth-wrapped blade from a side table to show them the bloodied blade, and in particular the inscription.

“What’s that, the US Marines motto?” Wynonna asked, frowning.

“Is that a joke?” Dolls asked, eyeing her, then sighed. “You’re thinking of _semper fi_.”

“Oh.”

“It means _death always to tyrants,_ ” Nicole provided.

“That’s the Marines motto?” Wynonna said, and whistled. “Wow.”

“No,” Dolls objected, aghast, and Nicole laughed.

“Just trying to lighten the mood,” Wynonna said, and winked at him. “Don’t get your panties in a bunch. Death to tyrants. That sounds familiar to me. Why does it sound familiar to me?”

“The phrase was allegedly made famous in modern history by John Wilkes Booth,” Dolls added. “Legend has it he shouted it after he shot Lincoln, just before he fled the scene.”

“Yeah, but that knife isn’t Civil War-era,” Waverly said from the other table. “It’s much older.”

“I’m not going to ask how you’re so confident about that,” Wynonna said, raising her hands in surrender. “So what _is_ it then?”

“Hmmm...” Waverly said, still flipping through the books. She was silent for a long minute, and Nicole shared a blank look and a shrug with Wynonna and Dolls. “Aha! I _thought_ so!”

She looked up at them with a wild-eyed grin, pointing aggressively at one of the pages. “Dante’s Inferno.”

“Burn baby burn?” Wynonna offered.

“No!” Waverly protested, then sighed and began to explain, gesturing with both hands. “In Dante’s Inferno, the ninth level of Hell is home to the worst of the worst. Traitors to country and creed. Dante describes only three people being so condemned: Judas Iscariot—”

“I _knew_ snails were evil,” Wynonna whispered. Nicole struggled not to laugh. Mostly because this time Wynonna actually looked serious.

“—and Brutus and Cassius, two men who conspired to murder Julius Caesar on the floor of the Roman Senate. That, by the way, is the real origin of that saying. Death will always come to tyrants... and often at the hands of ‘true’ patriots. Just like it came to Caesar.”

“Okay,” Dolls said, frowning. “But even if you suppose that Dante’s account is based in fact—which is unlikely—that would mean that Brutus and Cassius are safely away from this world, trapped in the very depths of hell with Lucifer himself as their overseer and jailor.”

“Right,” Waverly said, brimming with excitement. “But what about the others?”

Dolls’ eyes widened with understanding just as Nicole huffed out a breath and ran a hand down her face, partially muffling the words, “You think the spirit of one of the other Senators was bound to this knife.”

“I do,” Waverly said. “Most reputable accounts say that some _sixty_ men conspired with Brutus and Cassius to enact the killing. He was stabbed by multiple blades, 23 times according to his autopsy which—unless I am behind on my research—is the first known post-mortem report in history. I mean even if you _only_ include the ones directly involved with the conspiracy there’s Servilius Casca, maybe, or Tillius Cimber. Now.” She picked up the abandoned scabbard and showed it to them. “See these studs? These are iron. A grounding metal. And these patterns.” She tapped her fingers against the sweeping embossed lines Nicole had noticed earlier. “These don’t look like Roman design. It’s more like Celtic knotwork, but they’re _magical_ , not religious. They’re _binding spells_. As long as the knife remained inside this sheath, the spirit was bound along with it.”

“Shit,” Nicole breathed. “But the Rodricks wanted to examine it. Rodrick drew it from the scabbard, and...”

“Exactly,” Waverly said.

“Okay wait, wait,” Wynonna said, slicing her hands through the air. “So what you’re telling me is that we’ve got a pissed off Roman ghost lurking somewhere in this building.”

“Yeah,” Waverly said.

“This _huge fucking building_ ,” Wynonna added.

“Yeah.”

Wynonna threw her head back with an explosive groan. “And how the hell are we supposed to _find_ it?”

“I’ve got an idea about that,” Waverly said. She pulled a roll of paper up from a nearby sofa and spread it over the books. “These are blueprints of the mansion.”

“How’d you get those?” Nicole asked, startled.

“James,” Waverly said, as if that should explain everything.

“But _how?”_

Waverly flashed her a guilty smile. “I asked nicely?”

Nicole rubbed the bridge of her nose, but gestured with her free hand to say _please, continue_.

“A spirit that old,” Dolls said, tapping a finger to his mouth in thought. “It’s probably powerful, sure, but the more powerful it is, the more weaknesses. Law of Epochs at _minimum_...”

“Law of what?” Nicole muttered, but they were talking past her.

“That’s what I was thinking,” Waverly said. “Plus, he’s been trapped in a _knife_ for potentially some two thousand years.”

“He’d look for something humanoid,” Dolls suggested, catching on.

“Why?” Wynonna asked.

“He went from the knife to a human host immediately, which tells us how he thinks,” Dolls explained. “If you’d been trapped in an inanimate object for two millennia and you wanted to assert your humanity and your will, wouldn’t you want something that felt like your old body?”

“Sure,” Wynonna said. “I’d also want revenge on whoever put me there. Just gonna throw that out there.”

“Exactly,” Waverly said. “And to do that, you’d need a powerful host.”

“Listen,” Wynonna drawled, “The last time I got anywhere near Communion wafers five people got food poisoning.”

“What I _meant_ was,” Waverly said, interrupting, “Power fantasy, plus humanoid, plus the Law of Epochs.”

Nicole raised a hand, miming a brake pedal. “Epochs?”

“There’s this phenomenon in spirit possession,” Waverly explained, beaming as if the interruption didn’t bother her at all. That was her Waverly, always excited to share new information. “Most ghost-hunters and students of supernatural biology call it the Law of Epochs. Spirits tend to be bound to materials or things that are similar to themselves, or at least proximal. For example, the Senator was probably bound—deliberately or otherwise—to this knife, right, which is almost _certainly_ the original pugio he used to stab Caesar. But if he tried to jump to another weapon and all he had available was a firearm, he wouldn’t be able to. They’re too different.”

“BBD literature also talks about the Law of Likeness,” Dolls added, and Waverly nodded. “Most of the time a spirit bound to a knife like this will be drawn to other knives; books to books, vehicles to vehicles, pottery to pottery. The fact that this Senator jumped immediately to a human host means either that he’s powerful enough to bend the Likeness rule, or that something about Rodrick was similar enough that he could actually qualify as a Likeness.”

“Pretty sure no one else in this building would be a good host for this asshole,” Nicole muttered.

Dolls shook his head. “Might not matter. By using Rodrick, it’s entirely possible that _human_ or at least _human-like_ is now one of his Likenesses.”

Wynonna stepped back, raising her hands. “Whoa. Are we gonna be okay? I am not interested in this turning into a game of Who’s On First.”

“He hasn’t tried to jump any of us so far, so we should be fine for a while longer at least,” Waverly said, and she tapped one finger to the blueprint over a large chamber on the second floor. “And this is what we can use against him.”

“What is that,” Nicole said, leaning closer. “Statuary Chamber?”

“Marble statues,” Waverly said, and grinned. “Now. Everybody listen up.”

 

About twenty minutes later, Nicole approached the statuary chamber alone. They’d rather hastily constructed a toga from a curtain off a downstairs window, held shut with one of the drape’s tasseled tiebacks. Other than that she wore absolutely nothing, aside from a paste of aromatic herbs that Waverly had smeared across her forehead and along her collarbones.

According to Waverly it would attract the spirit, but so far the only thing it was attracting was a very powerful urge to sneeze.

Nicole opened the door to the statuary chamber with the knife in her left hand and slipped inside, her bare feet silent as a whisper on the shiny tile floor.

The room was huge. The ceilings vaulted above her some twenty feet with decorative half-columns along the walls, leaving the floor clear. Two rows of marble statues, all somehow alike despite being by different sculptors and styles, stood like a procession of soldiers, facing each other and silent, keeping vigil over the chamber. There were ten, five to a line, and if just then all the statues had spontaneously unsheathed swords and crossed them overhead to form a saber arch, she wouldn’t have been surprised. But the statues were just that. Statues. Dead and quiet.

Just like their ghost.

“Senator,” she called out, raising her voice. “I would speak to you.”

She moved to the center of the room and knelt on the floor, placing the knife on the ground before her.

“Senator, I invoke your blade. Retrieve your right.”

Silence stretched around her, filling the corners of the room. She waited.

“Senator, come and face me.” She wrinkled her nose, trying not to roll her eyes as she recited the next words Waverly had taught her. “I am a woman, but I am strong. Together we might join in war and blood.”

There was a faint sound just at the edge of her hearing. A low hiss like an oxygen tank de-pressurizing.

“Face me!” she said again.

Her vision suddenly went black, as if someone had covered her eyes, but so completely that for a moment lizard-brain panic set in and she was sure she would never see again. There was a _pressure_ in her head, a weight of something trying to wrestle control from her.

But then, she was pretty familiar with _that_ feeling.

A voice slid through her mind, icy and thick, like struggling through a frozen pond. She wasn’t sure if Honey was translating, but it sure _sounded_ like English.

 _Your body does look strong, but you will be easy to take_.

“Got you,” she snarled, grinning.

She felt, more so than heard, Honey’s rumbling warning growl. Possessive defiance.

“It’s already a little crowded in here, sorry. No room for anyone else,” Nicole told him, spreading her hands in a shrug. “You better find some other host before I rip you apart inside my head.”

 _Treacherous bitch!_ the spirit snarled, and just as suddenly as it had come, the pressure and the darkness left her.

She watched the dark cloud of the Senator’s essence dart across the room and settle on one of the marble statues, soaking into the stone.

For a moment, nothing happened.

And then the statue _moved_.

The stone made a terrible, low grinding noise as joints that were never supposed to move began to bend and twist. The statue—fittingly, a Roman athlete in _contrapposto_ —stepped down off its plinth.

Nicole stood up from the floor as Honey rose to meet her and melded into her thoughts. The change was seamless, painless, but familiar. For this, they would need hands, so they shied away from the other form they’d mastered—the _understanding_ they’d reached, really—while fighting Shae. Instead, she stood up on her back paws, straightening until her head was on a level with the marble statues all around her. Her “toga” clung to her, now entirely too small, and she tore it away, the curtain falling away from her claws in shreds.

And to her shock, Honey _spoke_ , then. The sounds that came out of Nicole’s mouth were definitely not her voice, but something old and decidedly animal. A voice she hadn’t heard since that fateful encounter with Hecate.

“ ** _You forget your history, Caesar-killer_** _,”_ Honey growled, and flexed their shared claws. Their mouth split open into a wide, toothy grin as the statue squared off across from them. “ ** _Or did they stop teaching, by your time, that Rome only_ existed _for the kindness of a wolf-bitch?”_**

If the Senator could speak with the statue’s cold stone mouth, he chose not to. The statue threw itself forward, and Nicole dove to the side. The carved marble heels skidded on the tile with a terrible grinding noise as it attempted to keep pace. She swung around while it was still recovering and grabbed its cold, heavy head in one big paw. She twisted, pulling it over her hip in a surreal, supernaturally powered judo flip, and sent it face-first into the ground with a deafening crash.

For a moment, all was still.

Then the statue’s hand latched around her ankle and _yanked_ , and she fell hard on her back as the statue began to rise. Its face was a ruined mockery of its prior elegance and beauty. There was a dark, deep spiderweb of cracks spreading out in every direction, and the nose, which seemed to have been what hit the floor first, looked like the Sphynx, shattered and missing and now dripping dust and tiny chunks of rock like blood.

Nicole snarled at the statue, scrambling back far enough to twist and get her feet underneath her. _I barely fucking_ dented _it!_ she thought at Honey, furious. These days she and Honey didn’t really need word-based communication, but dammit, sometimes you just really needed to swear.

The statue followed her and she ducked and twisted and pivoted, digging her nails into the tile for traction and leaving deep lines everywhere she went.

Honey suggested an alternative and on the next hairpin turn, they changed shape again, falling forward onto their two front paws to duck underneath the statue’s hard, cold arm.

On all fours Nicole ducked and wove around the room, tracking the statue’s position by the heavy thuds of its feet in pursuit. The next time the statue closed on her, she ducked behind another of the statues, and the Senator barreled into it.

Both marble statues tumbled to the ground, hitting the floor with such devastating force that they shattered into huge chunks.

The dark mist of the Senator rose out of the wreckage and moved to a new statue.

Nicole was panting, growling on every exhale, but she grinned.

She led the spirit in a merry chase for what felt like hours. It didn’t fall for the duck-and-smash maneuver a second time, but she did manage to make it clip the leg of a fourth statue—a Hoplite in full armor, of all things—and on a second pass she leapt onto the Hoplite’s back, tipping it over so that it fell onto the spirit’s new host and smashed both.

A fifth she led directly into a wall, while a sixth she baited straight through a window, which it smashed through _spectacularly_ in a veritable firework display of broken glass before shattering on the pavement below.

The seventh, though, managed to catch her by the scruff of her neck. She yelped, and it spun in a tight circle. It released her, flinging her halfway across the room, and she smashed bodily into one of the columns along the wall. She hit it with a sickening crash and felt something _crack_ in her spine, a sound that sent panic bells clamoring in her head, even with Honey’s absolute confidence she could heal it. She screamed, a sound that came out of her wolfish mouth as a tremulous, feral yelp. She fell heavily to the floor and tried to get her back feet beneath her, but they wouldn’t move.

Her form rippled and began to collapse as Honey raced to address the damage. The statue stalked toward her, heavy stone feet _thump-thump-thump_ ing across the floor.

“Hey asshole!”

The statue hesitated and turned toward the sound. Nicole lifted her head even as it lost some fur and structure and began to shrink back toward her usual human proportions. Wynonna stood just a little inside from the doorway, Peacemaker raised and glowing.

“No animals were harmed in the making of this trap,” Wynonna drawled, and fired.

The bullet slammed through the marble head like it was a paper target, blowing stone chunks and dust like blood. Though the statue itself was solid stone, under the supernatural assault it turned to gravel and collapsed, and the dark cloud of the Senator left its host.

“Seriously?” Wynonna demanded, but she winked at Nicole, turned, and as the mist took hold of its next two hosts, she shot them both, leaving one last statue. The dark cloud of the Senator’s will darted into it.

 _I tire of this_ _game_ , the Senator rasped, its voice coming from the statue and yet also from the whole room.

“Good,” Wynonna said, and lowered Peacemaker, shooting the statue in one kneecap.

Its leg gave out under its own weight and it buckled, falling onto its shattered knee like it was waiting to be knighted.

“Go ahead,” Nicole rasped. “Try to get out of that one. We’ll wait.”

It glanced toward her, then toward Wynonna, and then the statue’s shoulders twitched back and forth, like it was trying to wriggle out of quicksand.

“Yep,” Wynonna said, with an audible pop. She waved Peacemaker in the statue’s direction, but looked to Nicole, grinning. “Dolls did a good job with that spirit trap, huh. Shame this guy was screwing around in some other corner of the mansion while he set everything up this room.”

Nicole chuckled darkly, then hissed and whined as Honey forced something back into place with a tiny _crack_.

“Game over, _Roman_ Polanski. You can’t leave that host,” Wynonna informed it. “Shame you didn’t check the statues first, or you’d have seen all the wax and charcoal runes on that one’s back.” She stalked toward it, but wisely stayed out of grabbing range. She lifted the old revolver and aimed it at the spirit’s forehead, pulling the hammer back with a resonant, righteous _click-click-thunk_. “You’ve dodged this shit for _way_ too long, old man. It’s time. _Make your peace._ ”

 _No peace for a killer of Caesar_ , the spirit said, its voice echoing throughout the room.

“Bummer,” Wynonna said, and pulled the trigger.

 

James-the-butler was absolutely beside himself when he discovered the mess they’d made of the statuary chamber. Dolls pulled him aside, and while Nicole didn’t really listen to what Dolls told him, whatever it was it scared him straight. James offered absolutely no more complaints as the four of them gathered up their supplies and equipment and trooped back out onto the gravel lot to load up the pickup.

Nicole was able to walk under her own power by then, but stiffly and with a lot of pain. She leaned on Waverly the whole way, which made for a somewhat comical image, judging by Wynonna’s expression when they made their way out onto the Not-Villa’s front steps.

“It’s like a giraffe leaning on a horse,” she said, with an exaggerated coo of affection as she watched them very slowly make their way down the front steps toward the gravel.

“Shut up, Wynonna,” they said in unison.

Dolls came around the truck and opened the passenger door of Nicole’s cruiser for her, leaning on the door. “Seriously, want any help?”

Nicole glanced down at Waverly, who smiled and shook her head. “No, we’ll manage,” she told Dolls. “Besides, by the time we get back to Purgatory I’ll probably be all patched up.”

“Good to hear it,” he said.

Waverly helped her into her seat, which was a very gangly affair and evoked entirely too many images of foals learning to walk, but once she was safely on her seat and her legs were inside the car Nicole flopped her head against the headrest and huffed out a sigh.

“Okay but hear me out,” Wynonna said, leaning her elbow on the top of the cruiser. “I’m really glad you’re not paralyzed, first off.”

Nicole eyed her. “Thank you?”

“But if you had been, listen, I know a guy who works the monster truck scene. We _totally_ could’ve made a giant dog wheelchair for you.”

Waverly smacked her arm and Dolls suddenly found the fountain extremely interesting, his shoulders shaking with the effort of stifling laughter.

“Oh my _god_ ,” Nicole said, covering her face with both hands. “Ow, ow, ow don’t make me laugh.”

“Pshhht,” Wynonna said, and flapped a hand. “Laughter is the best medicine. It must be true, I read it on the internet.”

“Go home, Wynonna,” Nicole said, still trying to stop laughing. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Happy Anniversary you two,” Wynonna said, patting the top of the cruiser twice and giving her sister a hug. “Come on Dolls! And don’t lie to me, I see you losing your shit.”

“No,” Dolls protested, winking at Nicole and Waverly as he went to follow Wynonna back to the truck. “I was just laughing at how stupid it is to have an exterior fountain this far north. I mean that fountain water’s gotta be like half anti-freeze, right?”

“Yeah, _probably_ ,” Wynonna said. “But I mean, who’d be stupid enough to drink from that fountain?”

“Wynonna.”

“Dolls, hey, how do you feel about maybe swinging by the hospital on the way home.”

“ _Wynonna_.”

“Relax, Dolls, I’m an alcoholic, not _stupid_.”

The doors of the truck closed, and whatever Dolls said next, Nicole couldn’t hear it over the revving and rumbling of the truck’s engine.

She was still chuckling under her breath when Waverly climbed in the driver’s seat. Conspicuously, she said nothing, just slid the keys into the ignition and then paused.

“What’s on your mind?” Nicole murmured. On instinct she looked inward, searching for the echo of Waverly’s feelings she could feel across their mate bond, but it was dulled, quiet, like Waverly was deliberately blocking anything from getting through. That was more worrying than anything else, and Nicole turned, looking toward her.

Waverly twisted, leaned her elbow on the center console, and tangled her fingers into Nicole’s hair so that the heel of her palm slid along Nicole’s jaw. Her kiss was hard, desperate, and full of entirely too much fear.

“Hey,” Nicole murmured, as soon as Waverly gave her half a chance to speak. “I’m okay.”

“Don’t do that to me again,” she whispered, leaning her forehead against Nicole’s. “Please.”

“Do my best, baby.”

She sighed, her thumb tracking back and forth against Nicole’s cheek. “Haven’t been that scared for you in a while.”

“Nothing’ll keep me down for long,” Nicole murmured. “But Wynonna was right about one thing.”

“Hm?”

“Even if something permanent ever happens to me, it won’t stop me from doing any of the things I love.”

“I know.” Waverly chuckled and wiped at her face with her hand. “I know. And I’m with you no matter what. But I’d really like for it to be a long, _long_ time before you need a wheelchair, okay?”

“Okay.” Nicole grinned and nuzzled her nose against Waverly’s. “I think I can make that happen.”

“You’d better.” Waverly smiled, kissed the tip of Nicole’s nose, and pulled back into the driver’s seat. “Now. Want to go home?”

“Actually,” Nicole said, and checked the dashboard clock. “We’ve still got those dinner reservations in the city, if you don’t mind driving.”

“You sure you’ll be all right?”

“Yeah,” Nicole said, grinning. “Honey’ll take care of me.”

“And later,” Waverly said, grinning right back, “I’ll take care of you.”

“Mmhm,” Nicole said, and leaned over the console again to kiss her. The knot of healing tissue and cartilage in her back twinged painfully as she did it, and she pulled back immediately, settling into her seat. “Sorry the estate sale turned out to be such a bust, though. This really wasn’t how I meant to spend our anniversary.”

“Are you kidding?” Waverly said, pulling the car back onto the estate’s front drive to leave. She laughed. “Hunting an ancient Roman ghost in a fabulously over-the-top mansion? That sounds _exactly_ like how we’d end up spending our anniversary.”

“Well in that case,” Nicole said, laughing, “I’ll have to think about what monster-infested location I should take you to next year.”

“Actually,” Waverly said thoughtfully, tapping one finger to her chin as they put the estate in their rear-view mirror. “Have you ever been to the Winchester House?”

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly it's really hard to believe it's been a whole year since I wrapped up the main story for this crazy werewolf story. In the interim I've finished the first draft of a novel (and then started to rewrite it :p) and learned a lot and read a lot. But I've never quite gotten away from the sheer joy and excitement of sharing stories with you guys. And I look forward to sharing many more.
> 
> And in the meantime... bring sunshine and the confidence of a Grecian wolf spirit with you where you go, friends. Cuz it's getting dark out there, but they won't win.


End file.
